New world record for Fonterra

Fonterra Edendale's Drier 4 (ED4) has set a new world record for producing 20,826 metric tonnes (MT) of milk powder for the month of March.

ED4 is the world's largest milk drier and converts 100 litres of milk into 10 kilograms of milk powder every second. It surpassed the production records of 19,102MT for ED4 and 19,529 by Fonterra Clandeboye's Drier 3, both set earlier this season.

Fonterra Southern Operations Manager Keith Mason says breaking the 20,000MT mark is an outstanding achievement and a testament to the hard work of the 550 staff at the Edendale site.

"ED4 is designed to handle 28MT per hour and we've managed to run it at 29MT per hour. This comes down to our team's expertise and the fact that we have some of the world's most skilled operators," said Mr Mason.

Completed in September 2009 at a cost of $212 million, ED4 stands 56 metres tall and has a total floor area of 6,176 square metres.

"ED4 is not only the world's largest milk drier; it is our most efficient manufacturing asset. Anything we can do to leverage the scale of ED4 will further reduce operations cost and drive strong returns for our farmers," Mr Mason said.

The drier was built and installed by Swedish food packaging and processing company Tetra Pak, who said it is pleased ED4 is delivering capacity and performance for Fonterra during a season of record milk volumes.

The enormous drier had just 3.84 hours of downtime in March and is on track to produce 12.5 per cent more milk powder than last season.